The Red Card
by Nina Vixen
Summary: The students of Hogwarts are in danger but by two of their own! Mysterious red cards are popping up all over the place and whoever gets one is doomed to die. What's going on? Will anyone find out the truth behind the senseless murdering's? Rated T just in case.
1. Prologue

Hey, hope you enjoy this HP fanfic. I don't own HP. Check out DarkStarInOrbit. Prologue: It was simple really. If you got a red card, you were a dead man walking. Every breath you took after the blood red slip arrived could be your last. Your friends would desert you. Fellow students would back away from you in the hallways like you carried some form of contagious disease. Even the Professors would gaze upon you with pity, knowing that you were a goner and not being able to do a thing to stop it. And then you would die. No one knows particularly how, although they can try to figure it out when they examine your corpse later, or why the red card signifies your near death, but it does. And when that card turns black, you won't be there to see it. 


	2. Chapter 1

1. The first time was the worst. No one expected it. It had been just an average Thursday at Hogwarts. Classes were going on as planned. Students were ambling down the corridors gossiping about petty things such as who dated whom over the summer and who would be the winner of the next quidditch game, chatting without fear without worry. It had started at lunchtime with the midday post. Draco Malfoy had been boasting to all of his Slytherin friends about the fight that he had beaten Potter in that morning, when an article of paper was dropped delicately in front of him by a jet black owl with green eyes. A red slip of parchment. But how on earth was the like of Draco Malfoy supposed to understand anything red? That was Gryffindor territory. So, the moron did nothing, unaware of his life ticking away by the second, the parchment tucked away, forgotten, in his robe pocket. Draco Malfoy was fine, until the last period potions class. He had always prided himself on his perfect attendance record. He hadn't been off sick in his life, but no one suspected anything when he raised his hand in his Godfather's lesson, asking to go to see Madame Pomfrey in the hospital wing. "Whatever for, Draco?" the foreboding voice of the Potions master called out. Despite Draco being his Godson, he was peeved that his lecture had been interrupted. "Sorry, Professor. For some reason, I hear an awful banging in my head and it's getting louder and faster. I think it's a headache but I would like to have Madame Pomfrey take a look at it." Severus Snape nodded his head sharply before turning back to the blackboard as Draco scurried away from the dungeons. That was the last time anyone saw Draco, alive. As the students from Professor Snape's potions class strolled up the stairs to the entrance hall, they froze when they saw a figure slumped at the top, unmoving. Pale grey, sightless eyes stared at them all, platinum blond hair lifting around his face in the gentle breeze running through the castle. Draco Malfoy lay dead before them. Ministry workers swarmed Hogwarts, searching every crevice and every passageway, but they couldn't find the murderer and neither could they find any form of struggle or weapon entry point on the body they had obtained. All they located was a black piece of parchment, scrunched up in the Malfoy heir's pocket that they hid away in the Department of Wizarding Crime & Murder in the extremely big file marked Hogwarts: Student Deaths. That was the first victim of the red card. 


	3. Chapter 2

2. And then the second card came. This time for a Miss Ginevra Weasley. This one was also a surprise and it occurred merely a month and a half after the death of Draco Malfoy. Everyone had still been in mourning. Even though Draco had been in Slytherin, a lot of students, of all ages, had looked up to him. On the morning of her death, Ginevra, or Ginny as she preferred to be called, was sulking at the Gryffindor table in the main hall. She was complaining to anyone who would listen about her 'boyfriend' Harry and how he simply didn't realise how good they were together because he had kept on telling her to go away and that they weren't a couple. Most people just ignored her. Ginny was a stuck up brat and had been trying to get with the 'famous Harry Potter' for as long as she'd known him. So when Ginny finally stopped yapping because of the curious mail she'd received, people were grateful. And Ginny, being the abnormally stupid twit that she was, assumed that the red paper she had been offered was a love note from her darling Harry because the owl, she had noticed, had the same coloured eyes as Harry and had jet black feathers like Harry's hair. Everyone rolled their eyes as she skipped off to go and tell Harry that 'all was forgiven'. Ginevra Weasley was found dead an hour later by the lake. Again with no signs of a wound on her body or the murderer in the vicinity. But with the same black paper that Draco Malfoy had been found with. Witnesses spoke of the paper they had seen Ginny get at lunch and said that it had definatly been red but must have changed when she died. Suspicions whipped around the school and students began to wonder when the next red card would appear. Their notions came true when Gryffindor, Colin Creevey was sent a red card two weeks later. Creevey's friends tried to protect him. They thought that if they stayed by his side then the murderer wouldn't get to him. At around dinner time Colin told his mates to go on ahead because he was feeling ill and needed to go to the bathroom. Despite his friends protests, he shooed them away and went to sort out his pounding headache. He was also found dead, holding the now black piece of parchment. The owl post was blocked off and it was forbidden to send any messages to one another by any form of bird. People walked around in fear, hoping that the caution they took to keep them safe would work. But it didn't. The red cards were always delivered by random animals. Dogs, cats, mice, lizards. But always the same colour. Black with green eyes. A couple of months after Colin Creevey's death, a new colour of animals were distributing the cards as well as the black and green ones. This time it was a platinum blond type of colour with bright, intense blue eyes. Those eyes were more daunting than the green because they always held a deep amusement when they looked into your eyes, dropping the parchment in your lap or by your feet. The green eyes only held pure malice. The eyes would be all the victim would think about in their final hours. Those blue or green eyes intent upon their death. Those eyes that contained such emotion, none of it good. Those eyes, the victim would think in their final breaths. They're almost… Human. -Please review! No flames!- 


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